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I was in Manchester on Friday for a meeting at the University. I had a little time to kill so went for a coffee at a café on Oxford Road towards the Infirmary. Across the road on the corner of Oxford Road and Gilchrist Street, I spotted this mural – a poem by Lem Sissay. It’s one of his “Landmark Poems“

I lived at the edge of the town
like a streetlamp whose light bulb
no one ever replaces.
Cobwebs held the walls together,
and sweat our clasped hands.
I hid my teddy bear
in holes in crudely built stone walls
saving him from dreams.

Day and night I made the threshold come alive
returning like a bee that
always returns to the previous flower.
It was a time of peace when I left home:

the bitten apple was not bruised,
on the letter a stamp with an old abandoned house.

From birth I’ve migrated to quiet places
and voids have clung beneath me
like snow that doesn’t know if it belongs
to the earth or to the air.

While I was wandering around the centre of Galway, I spotted this mural painted on the side of a butcher’s shop opposite the St Nicholas Collegiate Church.

Later, not far away I came across 3 more murals, clustered together

two of them facing each other on walls flanking a car park.

I was curious. They clearly had some connection with each other, but what? And the words painted as part of the murals clearly had some meaning. But there didn’t seem to be any information about them.

On returning home, some research on the web finally revealed the answer. They had been created last year as part of the annual Cúirt literary festival. The paintings are an interpretation of poems by Philip Larkin, Dermot Healy, Nikola Madzirov and Irvine Welsh by local street artist Finbar247. Originally, there were plaques with the poems installed on the walls next to the poems but, with the exception of one, they had been removed, presumably by vandals.

There are some videos showing the paintings being created by the artist on the Cúirt website.

This exhibit in the Imperial War Museum North looks like an abstract sculpture. But closer inspection reveals that it’s a fragment from the Twin Towers. The columns, thought to be from the North Tower, formed part of a window section from an external wall.

The pet, Simon Armitage’s response to the exhibit articulate how I felt

‘To stand in front of that mangled and buckled section of steel is to feel bewildered and dumfounded. Pointlessness and poignancy seem to reside within that exhibit. I felt ashamed, angry, overwhelmed by the historical weight, and very small in its shadow. I felt wordless.’

His poem , The Convergence of Twain, is displayed beside the twisted metal

The Convergence of the Twain

I

Here is an architecture of air.
Where dust has cleared,
nothing stands but free sky, unlimited and sheer.

II

Smoke’s dark bruise
has paled, soothed
by wind, dabbed at and eased by rain, exposing the wound.

III

Over the spoil of junk,
rescuers prod and pick,
shout into tangled holes. What answers back is aftershock.

IV

All land lines are down.
Reports of mobile phones
are false. One half-excoriated Apple Mac still quotes the Dow Jones.

V

Shop windows are papered
with faces of the disappeared.
As if they might walk from the ruins – chosen, spared.

VI

With hindsight now we track
the vapour-trail of each flight-path
arcing through blue morning, like a curved thought.

VII

And in retrospect plot
the weird prospect
of a passenger plane beading an office-block.

VIII

But long before that dawn,
with those towers drawing
in worth and name to their full height, an opposite was forming,

IX

a force
still years and miles off,
yet moving headlong forwards, locked on a collision course.

X

Then time and space
contracted, so whatever distance
held those worlds apart thinned to an instant.

XI

During which, cameras framed
moments of grace
before the furious contact wherein earth and heaven fused.

In summer 2014, a huge range of books will come to life across London, celebrating the city’s links with literature, showcasing accessible visual art from top personalities and local artists and providing entertainment for adults and children alike. (Books about town)

The benches are like giant books, opened with one half folded over to form the seat and the other upright acting as the backrest. There are four trails around the city, one of them in Bloomsbury – not suprising given the area’s literary connections. I came across a number of them as I wandered around Bloomsbury late Wednesday afternoon.

Pride and Prejudice in Queens Square

1984

The Impotance of Being Earnest

Sherlock Holmes (not a good photo as a private party was taking place preventing access)

In summer 2014, a huge range of books will come to life across London, celebrating the city’s links with literature, showcasing accessible visual art from top personalities and local artists and providing entertainment for adults and children alike. (Books about town)

The benches are like giant books, opened with one half folded over to form the seat and the other upright acting as the backrest. There are four trails around the city, one of them in Bloomsbury – not suprising given the area’s literary connections. I came across a number of them as I wandered around Bloomsbury late Wednesday afternoon.

Pride and Prejudice in Queens Square

1984

The Impotance of Being Earnest

Sherlock Holmes (not a good photo as a private party was taking place preventing access)